The philosophy department of Lucknow University does it again.
Now five students of this discipline have received fellowship from the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR).
It was for the first time that so many students got fellowship in one go while in the past, this
number remained negligibly poor.

Three of the five students were selected for JRF fellowship and two others qualified for post doctoral fellowship.

This year there were just 10 vacancies for postdoctoral fellowship and 24 for JRF and LU has bagged five of the total 34 positions.

This is another major achievement after three students from this department left Lucknow to attend the World Congress of Philosophy at Athens in Greece.

Those selected for JRF fellowship are Kumar Rishabh, Sandeep Kumar and Shitanshu Pandey.

The trio will get R16,000 per month and other two-Jeetendra Yadav and Rajesh Kumar Tripathi-who will do postdoctoral fellowship will get R28,000 per month.

But all this was possible after students have gone through tough online test followed by close screening of their academic achievements and personal interviews by a panel of experts. In the past, students used to sail through on merit and interview basis.

But this time, the selection rules were more stringent as test was introduced.

Jeetendra and Rajesh told HT, “This test was even tough than that of UGC as they conduct the test only in English and for Hindi medium students it is not easy to crack the competition. A lot of credit goes to our teachers in the faculty who worked really hard for us in preparing study material for this competition.”

Prof Rakesh Chandra is elated over the achievement of these five students.

He said, “There are just eight faculty members in the department. With fewer teachers the department is finding it difficult to run its courses properly. We had to shut down BA Philosophy Honours as there was no faculty.”